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Privacy has become one of the defining issue of the Information Age. CIS has received national recognition for its interdisciplinary and multi-angle examination of privacy, particularly as it relates to emerging technology.

Albert Gidari is the Director of Privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. He was a partner for over 20 years at Perkins Coie LLP, achieving a top-ranking in privacy law by Chambers. He negotiated the first-ever "privacy by design" consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission on behalf of Google, which required the establishment of a comprehensive privacy program including third party compliance audits. Mr.

Jennifer Granick fights for civil liberties in an age of massive surveillance and powerful digital technology. As the new surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, she litigates, speaks, and writes about privacy, security, technology, and constitutional rights.

Norberto Andrade is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow scholar at UC Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (BCLT), and a Fellow at the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL, The Netherlands). He has worked as a Scientific Officer at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, and as a legal expert in the field of telecommunications at the Portuguese Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANACOM).

Charles Belle is the founder and Executive Director of Startup Policy Lab, a new nonprofit think tank dedicated to connecting policymakers and the startup community. Examining public policy at the nexus of startups and technology, Charles' research is currently focused on privacy and how to support local government open data initiatives while simultaneously protecting citizen privacy.

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When FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced last week that he would eliminate the "fair play" rules known as Net neutrality, he took a step that some economists and technologists worry will eventually lead to the monopolization of Internet services in America. What, if any, impact would the elimination of Net neutrality rules have on consumer privacy? The answer, in short, is that consumers would simply be forced to pay more for it.

An enormous amount of attention has been paid to the oral argument before the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States. The transcript provides tantalizing tea leaves as to whether the Court will find a protectable right to privacy in a cell phone subscriber’s location and many pundits seem to think the day went to Carpenter while I haven’t heard anyone touting a government homerun.

As I’ve been writing about networked information technologies as “tools,” it’s worth reiterating that metaphors of space are not entirely without value, including in areas of the law that derive from laws relating to real property. Having noted in multiple prior posts the weaknesses of spatial metaphors, here I discuss some of their common applications in ways that are productive. There are two particular applications of the physical space metaphor to online platforms and services that are interesting:

On October 10, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy about encryption. I have a lot to say about his remarks, so this will be a long post. Much of Rosenstein’s speech recycled the same old chestnuts that law enforcement’s been repeating about crypto for years. I’m happy to roast those chestnuts.

Imagine that a random car is periodically driving across your front yard, leaving tire treads and gouges on your otherwise pristine lawn. How would you handle it? You might set up a surveillance camera to capture an image of the license plate and driver and then share the image with the police. You might install a fence.

Arguing that a defendant’s conviction for website hacking should be overturned because legitimate, highly valuable security and privacy research commonly employs techniques that are essentially identical to what the defendant did and that such independent research is of great value to academics, government regulators and the public even when – often especially when — conducted without a website owner’s permission.

Arguing that the information publicly available on the NSA's Upstream program, combined with an understanding of how the Internet works, means plaintiff Wikimedia has met its burden of proving standing to challenge Upstream.

Arguing that if the court should not compel Apple to create software to enable unlocking and search of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, it will jeopardize digital and personal security more generally.

"We’re headed to a world of embedded sensors in everything, that measure everything, that see everything, that hear everything,” said Albert Gidari, director for privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. “The reality is that technology … kind of blurs law for privacy.”"

"“We’re headed to a world of embedded sensors in everything, that measure everything, that see everything, that hear everything,” says Albert Gidari, director for privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. “The reality is that technology...kind of blurs law for privacy.”"

"One of House’s lawyers, Catherine Crump, who was then an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union and now teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley, told Ars that the government claimed House had committed a misdemeanor in violation of 19 US Code Section 507. "They claimed he violated a statute requiring people to provide aid to border officials upon request," she e-mailed. "I am not sure how much of this was government posturing.

"Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who focuses on emerging technologies, said that evidence from devices like pacemakers shouldn’t even be admissible into court. Like DNA evidence before it, Calo said the risk of using it to wrongly implicate someone in a crime is just too high.

“There’s a tendency to believe that because something is recorded by a machine it is gospel,” Calo said."

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What kind of surveillance assistance can the U.S. government force companies to provide? This issue has entered the public consciousness due to the FBI's demand in February that Apple write software to help it access the San Bernardino shooter's encrypted iPhone. Technical assistance orders can go beyond the usual government requests for user data, requiring a company to actively participate in the government's monitoring of the targeted user(s).

If you're in the Bay Area, come out to the filming of our second episode of Ars Technica Live, a monthly interview series with fascinating people who work at the intersection of tech, science, and culture. Join us this Wednesday, May 18, in Oakland, California, from 7 to 9pm for a discussion with law professor Elizabeth Joh about technology, surveillance, and law enforcement.

Sextortion—defined as blackmail (often by the threat of releasing sexually explicit images of the victim) carried out over a computer network, which forces victims to engage in some form of sexual activity online—is a new term for a new crime. The remote coercion of sex is a crime that was impossible until recently, but with the expansion of the Internet and proliferation of webcams, Sextortion is a growing form of exploitation. This remarkably understudied crime has affected thousands of people, almost entirely women and children.

What's all this hullaballo about encryption? What's the latest in the FBI's ongoing dispute with Apple over encrypted iPhones? What's at stake? What could happen next? Find out all this and more at April's

Privacy Lab!

Our Speaker will be Riana Pfefferkorn:

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Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, talks to the FT's Hannah Kuchler about government surveillance in the US after the Snowden revelations, and how it could all change under a Trump administration.

Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, talks to the FT's Hannah Kuchler about government surveillance in the US after the Snowden revelations, and how it could all change under a Trump administration.

Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, talks to the FT's Hannah Kuchler about government surveillance in the US after the Snowden revelations, and how it could all change under a Trump administration.

Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western University School of Law, and Catherine Crump, Professor at Berkeley Law School, discuss whether or not police departments can collect and store vast amounts of data collected from license plate readers. They speak with Greg Stohr on Bloomberg Radio’s "Bloomberg Law." Bob Moon and Karen Moscow discuss the days top legal stories.